First Look at James Franco’s Cormac McCarthy Adaptation ‘Child of God’

The first two official pictures from James Franco‘s Child of God have arrived and both feature Scott Haze as Lester Ballard, the film’s main character.

That said, the film is now set to premiere at the Toronto Film Festival and is based on the Cormac McCarthy novel. Set in mountainous Sevier County, Tennessee in the 1960s, Child of God tells the story of Lester Ballard, a dispossessed, violent man whom the narrator describes as “a child of God much like yourself perhaps.” Ballard’s life is a disastrous attempt to exist outside the social order. Deprived of both his parents and a home, and with few other ties, Ballard descends to the level of a cave dweller, falling deeper into crime and degradation.

Based on the cast it seems Franco turned around and took the same fellas he used for As I Lay Dying (and perhaps even the same sets and costumes) and shot this film as it co-stars Tim Blake Nelson and Jim Parrack, both of whom starred in As I Lay Dying, which I saw and reviewed at Cannes earlier this year (read that review right here).

The film will show at both the Venice and Toronto Film Festivals in September.